There are many ways of presenting the history of the left. In this concise and cogent survey, Darrow Schecter avoids trivializing struggles of the last 150 years, focusing on Marx's theories and the diverse struggles for human emancipation that have characterized European and world history since the French Revolution.
Each chapter in the book builds on the previous one, analysing the emergence and development of a specifically left wing understanding of the relation between knowledge, left politics, and emancipation. Schecter explores the crucial question of how to institutionalize...
There are many ways of presenting the history of the left. In this concise and cogent survey, Darrow Schecter avoids trivializing struggles of the ...
This book analyses the critique of instrumental reason from Weber through to the present day. Weber constitutes the starting point because he represents a key moment of theoretical and political transition. Whereas Enlightenment thinkers such as Kant, Rousseau and Hegel had a profound faith in the power of reason to improve society and mankind, Weber signals that far from being a universally positive and progressive force, the institutionalisation of reason might actually be a highly effective tool in the struggle for domination. Schecter charts how Weber's ideas took shape as a response to...
This book analyses the critique of instrumental reason from Weber through to the present day. Weber constitutes the starting point because he represen...
Since the Enlightenment, liberal democrat governments in Europe and North America have been compelled to secure the legitimacy of their authority by constructing rational states whose rationality is based on modern forms of law. The first serious challenge to liberal democratic practices of legal legitimacy comes in Marx's early writings on Rousseau and Hegel. Marx discovers the limits of formal legal equality that does not address substantive relations of inequality in the workplace and in many other spheres of social life. Beyond Hegemony investigates the authoritarianism and breakdown of...
Since the Enlightenment, liberal democrat governments in Europe and North America have been compelled to secure the legitimacy of their authority by c...
What different kinds of reason are possible, and which ones are the most appropriate for a legitimate, as opposed to a merely legitimated state?The book opens with an analysis of Weber as a figure who marks a key moment of sociological transition. Weber articulates a distinctly different view to Enlightenment thinkers who believe in the capacity of reason to improve society and emancipate humanity from ignorance and domination. Weber signals that the institutionalization of the instrumental reason particular to industrial society might actually be an effective tool in the struggle for social...
What different kinds of reason are possible, and which ones are the most appropriate for a legitimate, as opposed to a merely legitimated state?The bo...
Critical Theory and Disability explores social and ontological issues encountered by present-day disabled people, applying ideas from disability studies and phenomenology. It focuses on disabling contexts in order to highlight and criticize the ontological assumptions of contemporary society, particularly those related to the meaning of human being. In empirical terms, the book explores critically social practices that undermine disabled people's well being, drawing on cases from contemporary Bulgaria. It includes in-depth examination of key mechanisms such as disability assessment,...
Critical Theory and Disability explores social and ontological issues encountered by present-day disabled people, applying ideas from disabilit...